This invention relates to a ceramic capacitor with buried electrodes each of which has multiple terminations at high points of a castellated edge of the ceramic body.
A few multilayer ceramic (MLC) capacitor structures are known wherein buried electrodes each having multiple terminations, and when terminations are provided at a castellated edge, the grooves in that edge are commonly filled with metal to serve as the terminations. The process used for providing the terminations involves many sequential steps and is costly in manufacturing.
Castellated edges in ceramic capacitors have heretofore been formed by a variety of methods involving, removal of ceramic material by cutting, abrading, sawing and the like at the edge of a fired ceramic substrate to which buried electrodes extend and at which electrodes terminations are to be provided. It has been suggested, but not implemented, to castellate the fragile edge of a green ceramic substrate. Another method calls for castellating the fragile edge of a green ceramic substrate by embossing it, namely, by pushing a castellating tool into it which displaces but does not remove ceramic material there. This later method would tend to distort the geometry of buried electrode extensions and overall dimensions of the substrate and would be especially difficult to control in the manufacture of miniature capacitors with the likes of 100 mils spacing for multiple terminations at a substrate edge.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a simple, reliable method for manufacturing ceramic substrates having buried electrodes that are terminated at a castellated edge.